Metal music promoter’s passion

September 1, 2010 - 11:00 pm

He painted the wall to match his current attire, a backward ball cap, pentagram- and goat head-festooned T-shirt and weathered Chuck Taylors: pitch black.

“It was yellow,” Lord Clovenhoof says with a chuckle, gesturing toward the backdrop behind the stage at the Lucky Lady (4360 S. Decatur Blvd.), a dimly lit southside bar. “It was ridiculous watching bands play up there. It looked like they were playing at a Holiday Inn.”

And so one Saturday, Clovenhoof (Patrick Kaedy), a local show promoter and indie label head, and his wife, Lisa, who sits next to him at the bar on a recent Wednesday evening, came down and painted the place a shade more suitable for the death and black metal in which they trade.

Kaedy didn’t get paid for his efforts, and he doesn’t make any money from the shows he books — he gives all the proceeds to the bands.

He’s a metal lifer, and this is a labor of love for him.

As such, Kaedy has become one of the central figures in the Vegas underground metal ranks, bouncing from venue to venue, trying to build a scene from practically nothing.

Most of the places he has booked aren’t used to having shows, so Kaedy brings the sound system, the lights and, yes, the fog machine — these are metal gigs we’re talking about.

He has thrown thrash shows at Four Aces on Boulder Highway and the NASCAR-themed High Maintenance, the latter of which proved to be an especially ill fit.

“It wasn’t really the most ideal spot to do shows,” Kaedy admits. “When we came in at night to set up the shows, all the people sitting at the bar were looking at us like, ‘Who the hell are these guys?’ ”

From there, Kaedy moved to Barley Pops and Yayo Tacos, and now he has settled into the Lucky Lady, where he has been holding outdoor, all-ages shows in the bar’s back parking lot.

He has gotten some local bands to donate their time to build a stage and is putting together a steady lineup of local and national acts for the place.

Kaedy’s the kind of guy that every scene needs, someone who’s just in it for the music and little else.